joy thieves and tailspins

the most awesome elyse recently posted about her experience with joy thieves - i myself had an encounter with one and it took the wind right out of my sails...of a ship i was already feeling kind of insecure about.

BOAT METAPHOR!

my boat is tiny as shit, and then someone comes along and says" wow, your boat would fit in the giant Carnival Cruise Ship line I'M buying, but you're single so it's fine"

(Okay so maybe not a great nor subtle metaphor but i think you get the idea.)

the perfect storm of existing insecurities and a joy thief. i think a joy thief tends to have ZERO idea they are a such a person, and it makes me wonder when i might have been one. so if i've ever been one to you, i'm sorry. because being on the other end is a shitty place to be.

it takes one person (or maybe two) to send me into an emotional tailspin. that apartment that i was SO excited about is now:

my apartment isn't big enough and i won't even own it because i've been dicking around with my life and my (lack of) savings and don't have a high paying job because i'm three years behind where i should be in my career because i didn't get a post graduate degree right out of undergrad and/or it took me too long to figure out what i wanted to do in the first place, and i'm single and nowhere near sharing my life with someone and too undisciplined about being the size i want to be and

JESUS CHRIST. IT'S TOO MUCH.

i want to be able to tell you that through the course of writing this post i've turned it around already and am telling my insecurities to go fuck themselves, but that is not the case. at least not yet. i can see the absurdity in my emotional tailspin and can ALSO see the many things i am incredibly lucky to have (amazing friends and family, the means to support myself, a relatively healthy body) - but the tailspin always trumps the gratitude. which in turn makes me feel worse, don't you know it.

anyways - this is a PSA against joy thieves and emotional tailspins. don't let them happen to you!